Uber, North Korea, Mosul: Your Morning Briefing

•Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and James Mattis, the American defense chief, met with Chinese officials in Washington.

Chinese officials and South Korea’s new president have proposed that the United States reduce its military footprint on the Korean Peninsula in return for talks on freezing Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs.

An American diplomat who has handled past negotiations with North Korea spoke to our opinion editors about how the U.S. could respond to the case of Otto Warmbier, the student who died this week after returning from 17 months in North Korean custody.

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CreditFayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

•In a shake-up in Saudi Arabia, King Salman removed the crown prince and named his 31-year-old son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, next in line to the throne.

Business

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CreditToru Yamanaka/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• Toshiba picked a consortium that is backed by the Japanese government to buy its microchip business, intensifying a dispute with an American partner, Western Digital, that also bid on the $20 billion chip business.

• Wang Shi, chairman and founder of China Vanke Group, the country’s largest real estate developer, will step down. Mr. Wang had recently found his position under threat in a rare Chinese hostile takeover attempt.

• On Ford’s milestone decision to make its Focus compact cars in China: “After years of predictions that cars sold in the West would bear the ‘Made in China’ label,” our Shanghai bureau chief writes, “the time has finally come.”

In the News

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CreditMohamed El-Shahed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• Al Nuri Grand Mosque in Mosul, where the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a caliphate in 2014, was destroyed. The Iraqi government said the Islamic State was behind the blast — but the militants blamed a U.S. airstrike. [The New York Times]

• In the southern Philippines, Islamist militants seized an elementary school and held 31 hostages for about 12 hours before escaping. [The New York Times]

• A dog meat festival opened as usual in the Chinese city of Yulin despite reports that the sale of dog meat was banned at the event this year. [BBC]

• A Times reporter attended the annual Lychee and Dog Meat festival in 2015. “Why do people always pick on Yulin?” a participant said at the time. [The New York Times]

• “A battered wife and a bloodied hockey stick.” A politician’s tweet about a Syrian refugee has ignited a firestorm in Canada. [The New York Times]

• As the global climate warms, disruptions to air travel are likely to become more frequent. Expect more delays and greater risk of injuries from increased turbulence. [The New York Times]

• The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a rule banning offensive trademarks. We talked to the frontman of the Slants, the Asian-American rock group that brought the case. [The New York Times]

• It has different names: cancer, diabetes, heart failure, stroke. But we all die of the same thing. In fact, dying has its own biology and symptoms. This is what to expect.

• And the N.B.A. draft is upon us, and the experts have weighed in on who’s going where. The 76ers and Lakers are expected to take Markelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball with the top two picks. After that, it gets interesting.

Back Story

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CreditKathryn Cook for The New York Times

The story of Galileo Galilei demonstrates many things, not least of which is that science keeps evolving.

It was today in 1633 that the Italian scholar was forced to renounce what we now accept as fact: that the earth orbits the sun, not the other way around.

His discovery of Jupiter’s larger moons in 1610 made him question the prevailing assumption that the earth was at the universe’s center.

His advocacy of the heliocentric theory earned him mockery, censure and, in 1633, a trial in Rome, during which he was forced to recant before a jury of cardinals. He vowed that he would “abjure, curse, and detest” his findings.

The declaration saved him from being burned at the stake but led to eight years of house arrest.

It took the Roman Catholic Church more than 350 years, until 1992, to acknowledge that Galileo had been wronged (although astronomers now tell us that the sun is not immobile, but orbits within the galaxy, pulling the planets along with it).

Today, Galileo’s discoveries seem obvious. But all things are easy to understand once they have been discovered, he wrote. “The point is in being able to discover them.”

Patrick Boehler contributed reporting.

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This briefing was prepared for the Asian morning. We also have briefings timed for the Australian, European and American mornings. You can sign up for these and other Times newsletters here.

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